Cannes 2017

Does Cannes Still Matter?

Sofia Coppola remembers arriving at the Cannes Film Festival in knee socks and Mary Janes on her eighth birthday, riding on her father’s shoulders through the crowds at the 1979 premiere of Apocalypse Now. “It was the 70s, and there were hippies and this funky atmosphere,” Coppola said. “It was a circus but fun, glamorous. . .festive.”

Times have changed since the groovy 1970s, and Cannes has too. When Coppola returns to the Croisette this week with The Beguiled, her film will be part of a festival that is embracing the technological and cultural forces that have rocked the industry, to controversial results. At the same time, Cannes is holding on to its status as cinema's traditionalist home. Walking the line between these two approaches to film gets harder every year.

This year’s Cannes is packed with decidedly modern offerings, and Coppola’s gender-flipped 19th-century story is just the start. The Beguiled is a new take on the 1971 Clint Eastwood drama about a Confederate soldier imprisoned in a girls’ school, told this time from the girls’ point of view. “The premise is just so loaded about male-female power,” Coppola said of her new film, which stars Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. “I thought you could talk about those things in an interesting way today.”

The big Hollywood studios who have in years past brought their splashy summer offerings to the Croisette—like 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road or 2016's The BFG—are staying home this year, leaving room for the usual roster of international auteurs and some choices that would have been unimaginable when Sofia Coppola first attended the fest as a child. After it opens with French director Arnaud Desplechin'sIsmael's Ghosts, Cannes will premiere films from streaming companies Amazon (Todd Haynes'sWonderstruck and Lynne Ramsay’sYou Were Never Really Here) and Netflix (Bong Joon-ho'sOkja and Noah Baumbach'sThe Meyerowitz Stories); debut TV series from Showtime (David Lynch'sTwin Peaks revival) and SundanceTV Jane Campion'sTop of the Lake); and host a virtual-reality art installation created by Alejandro Inarritu.

The transition to the bold future of entertainment hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. After Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux announced the lineup in April, French cinema owners protested his plan to premiere the two Netflix films without their having a theatrical release in France before hitting the streaming service. In response, Cannes changed its rules for next year’s festival, and will only accept theatrically released films for its Palme d’Or competition going forward.

While Netflix is grinding out the issue with Cannes and the French exhibitors, the streaming company’s chief competitor, Amazon Studios, has stayed out of the fray by hewing to tradition. “France is one of the most rigid territories,” said Bob Berney, who heads Amazon’s movie marketing and distribution. “But our commitment is to theatrical and big presentations, and so is [Cannes’s]. For our films, we really focus on directors. And they’re focused on directors. So our missions are very in sync.”

With most of the studios opting to stay home, it's up to the deep-pocketed streaming companies and TV networks to fork out money for hotel suites and jet-to-yacht travel. There are massive billboards promoting Paramount’s fifth Transformers film and Sony’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, and on Tuesday Sony staged an Emoji Movie stunt with T.J. Miller parasailing into the marina to premiere a new trailer. But “nobody wants the glare of an actual premiere there,” said one executive at a studio that’s holding back an anticipated summer film. “It’s just not worth it.”

Berney disagrees. “A lot of people in the business say Cannes is a hassle, it’s intense,” Berney said. “But I still love it. I love that the festival itself remains mostly unchanged.”

Many of the colorful characters who used to populate the market that adjoins the festival have vanished too, as the industry event has taken on a more tame, businesslike air. Gone are the fistfights over foreign rights sales and the posters selling movies that don’t actually exist. The critics, however, are still as vocal as they were in 2006, when Coppola's Marie Antoinette was booed. "The journalists can be provocative," she says now. "There was an attitude that some girl from California shouldn’t tell that story."

Brands have also invaded the Croisette, drafting off the festival's glamorous aesthetic but sometimes drawing attention away from the movies themselves.

“There was a before and an after L’Oreal—because once it came here [as a sponsor], models started coming here and the festival became a ‘scene,’” said Charlotte Gainsbourg, who attends Cannes this year for Ismael's Ghosts. “Before it wasn't only a scene. It really had to do first with films.”

Most who work in independent cinema say the evolution of Cannes is inevitable. “Look, the business has changed,” said David Linde, the CEO of Participant Media, which is bringing An Inconvenient Sequel, the Al Gore climate change documentary, to the festival with Paramount. “It’s getting tougher for film every year. There are very serious conversations going on between filmmakers and distributors for an art form that is experiencing real challenges. Netflix is making some really good films happen.”

Along with technological disruption, Cannes is contending with social forces shaping the film industry. Long criticized for the lack of women directors represented, this year Cannes will see the Coppola and Ramsay films, as well as Naomi Kawase’sRadiance premiering in competition, a short film directed by Kristen Stewart, the Campion series, and seven films directed by women in the independent-minded Directors' Fortnight section. The jury is also the festival’s most diverse, featuring jury president Pedro Almodovar, Will Smith, Jessica Chastain, Park Chan-wook, Maren Ade, Fan Bingbing, Agnes Jaoui, Paolo Sorrentino, and Gabriel Yared.

But as Cannes evolves, for many, its sense of tradition remains a virtue—even some of the stuffier customs.

“Cannes is the only place in the world where you still have to wear a bow tie,” said Sierra/Affinity CEO Nick Meyer, who will be shopping the Diane Keaton/Jacki Weaver cheerleader comedy Poms and the Kate Mara combat dog movie Megan Leavey to international buyers. “There are certain things that maintain this old-school tradition. It’s still a place that’s packed with glamour and grit.”